Pontiac's no longer under an emergency manager but leaders want the last word

Aug. 26, 2013

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Gov. Rick Snyder praised Pontiac’s outgoing emergency manager Louis Schimmel last week for balancing the budget of the long-troubled city while dramatically improving police-response times and other city services.

But members of the Pontiac City Council met Monday night to castigate Schimmel for wholesale changes he made in the city and, in particular, to label as illegal the strict operating rules he left behind in his “final order.”

Members voted 7-0 to declare that a different kind of emergencyexists in the city, one that threatens democracy, because of Schimmel’s final order, a 13-page document that lists numerous rules under which city officials must operate.

Schimmel could not be reached Monday night but in interviews last week he said issuing a final order is a standard way for outgoing emergency managers to prevent their changes from being undone.

The rulesinclude a limit of two minutes on how long visitors can speak at City Council meetings, and three minutes for how long council members can speak in their closing comments to end meetings.

“We want people to be able to speak (for) five minutes. And we always had as much time as we wanted” for closing comments of the council, City Councilwoman MaryPietila said. In those order and numerous others, Schimmel went “way above and beyond” the financial matters that he was supposed to oversee, she said.

A key concern of council members is that Schimmel’s order created the new position of city administrator and listed broad powers for the new job in the final order, Councilman Kermit Williams said after the meeting.

Schimmel’s final order begins by saying its rules are “binding on the local elected and appointed officials and employees” of the city, according to Michigan’s law that empowers Schimmel and other emergency managers of insolvent local governments — the controversial Public Act 436.

One resident who spoke at Monday’s council meeting said she would lead a picket line this morning to block Schimmel’s new city administrator, Joseph Sobota, from entering Pontiac City Hall, Williams said.

Others in the audience chimed in to say they’d join the human blockade, but Williams said it was unclear whether they were serious.

“I guess we’ll find out” this morning, he said. The resolution approved Monday will be sent to Lansing lawmakers later this week, Williams said, although such a resolution seems unlikely to have legal force against Schimmel’s Lansing-backed order.

As the city’s state-appointed financial manager for nearly three years, following a succession of two previous managers appointed by former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Schimmel is credited with turning Pontiac’s finances around, leaving the city with a far leaner government whose budgets are balanced for the next two fiscal years, according to a news release last week from Snyder’s office.